Paper short abstract:

Exploring the Turkish-sponsored securitized landscape across the Kurdish borderland and its relations to local trans-border economies, this contribution will reflect on how a diffused security regime reconfigures state power in its margins, through the imagined myth of ‘smuggling terror.’

Paper long abstract:

In the geographical area of Kurdistan – throughout southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq – territorial sovereignty remains a deeply contested issue. As a region of great interest for many transnational political actors, due to its migratory routes, oil infrastructures, and ethnic-political effervescence, Turkey has been readjusting its sovereignty (re)claiming efforts. After the collapse of the ‘peace process’ in 2015, the Kurdish rural and urban areas suffered a new wave of violence and witnessed the militarized presence of the Turkish state. Furthermore, the state-tribal relations over border territorial control have reshaped the co-construction of sovereignty locally through renewed security apparatuses, such as the village-guard system (korucu) and enhanced aerial technologies.

Yet, despite the capillary securitization of the Southeast, informal transnational economies have continued to thrive across the Turkey-Iraq borderline. Often labeled as smuggling (‘kaçakçılık’), these trans-border economies and their territorialized flows open a window to study the local effects of sovereignty through the framework of security.

Based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork in the region, this presentation will explore the securitized landscape across the Kurdish borderlands in an attempt to reflect on how a diffused security regime reconfigures state power in its margins. Guided by a locally negotiated security logic to prevent ‘smuggling terror,' this contribution will reflect on the fragmented yet changing condition of Turkish state territorial sovereignty.